Abstract
Contact processes may be represented by local discretization, by a rigid approach or by a mixed method using both ideas. For the dynamics of mechanical systems a rigid body approach is described achieving good results also for multiple contact problems. This paper considers mainly contacts in multi-body systems where the corre-sponding contact constraints vary with time thus generating structure-variant systems. The equations of motion for dynamical systems with such an unilateral behavior are discussed, solution methods and applications are presented.
